Finally, the very studies Martin advocates HAVE been done, by Brochu and
Norell (2001). They concluded deriving birds from any non-dinosaurian
archosaur involved far more temporal inconsistancy and that the fossil
record actually fits BAD rather well compared to other accepted tetrapod
phylogenies.

But why should Martin read the JVP?

I think that's in the Ostrom Symposium volume.

He isn't interested in dinosaurs*. He's an ornithologist -- and refuses
to understand that he can't make competent statements about the origin
and early evolution of birds without being a dinosaur expert.

Just as a side note, I recently discovered that Martin has interests in
areas outside ornithology. For instance, a few months ago I stumbled across
a chapter written by him in "Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North
America" edited by Christine Janis.

I'm sure he doesn't follow the discussion! Feduccia, likewise, didn't
know any of the recent ( = newer than The Dinosauria I) work on
Coelurosauria and seemingly still thought it was the old wastebasket
before I sent him the long list of apomorphies from HP Oliver Rauhut's
dissertation. Hey, in his 1996 book he still preassumed that hadrosaurs
were aquatic and therefore (logically!) concluded the paleontologists
must all have been too stupid to take their increased preservation
potential into account when calculating predator-prey ratios!!! It's just
like how most of us don't follow the apparently ongoing discussion about
the monophyly of "Old World flycatchers"... except for the consequences.

* Except Korean brachiosaurs. He coauthored the description of the first
"brachiosaurid" tooth from South (of course!) Korea a few years ago, as
well as a paper on sauropod tracks from there...